JONES, Inigo.

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The Designs of Inigo Jones, Consisting of Plans and Elevations for Publick and Private Buildings. First edition of this "impressive and important book. Yet oddly enough more influential than any single building depicted in it were its plates of doors, windows, niches, etc. These plates seem to have had a formative effect upon Gibbs's Book of Architecture (1728) and from that point on became a standard feature of 18th-century pattern books" (Harris, p. 251).Lord Burlington (1694-1753) bought a collection of drawings of designs by Inigo Jones in 1720 and began preparing them for publication. The project, however, did not start in earnest until he chose William Kent (1685-1748) to edit the work in 1724. Two years later, the Office of Works appointed Kent as master carpenter. Their efforts proved "a significant feature in Burlinton's campaign to establish a new standard of taste in England; the first, as it were, in a series of visual exemplars" (Millard, p. 136). Eager to promote public works, Kent dedicates the first volume mostly to designs for a royal palace at Whitehall, one which was in fact designed by Jones's assistant John Webb. The volume also includes details for doors and windows. Comprising mostly domestic buildings, the second volume includes designs for the Queen's House at Greenwich, a palace on the Thames at Richmond, a dormitory of Westminster School, the portico of Old St Paul's, and Palladio's San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice.

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